1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to a device for performing remote sampling and more particularly to an interface to be utilized with a submerged water-borne vehicle. The interface maintains fluid samples obtained in remote locations within removable reservoirs.
2. Description of Related Art
Unmanned vehicles are often used to perform activities that are difficult, dangerous, or impossible for humans to perform. One area where unmanned vehicles find success is in obtaining material samples that need to be chemically analyzed. For example, it is desirable to obtain chemical analysis of water samples at different locations and different depths. However, if there are high radiation or toxin levels, the water may be hazardous for humans to obtain the samples directly. Similarly, it may be impossible for humans to descend below certain water depths, while unmanned vehicles can exceed human limits.
Therefore, there have been attempts in the past to create devices that can obtain different fluid samples from different marine locations. However, these conventional devices merely collect samples without performing any analysis (or sampling) of the samples. Therefore, the samples must be transported to a separate location where they can be properly sampled and analyzed. However, during transport the samples can undergo unchanges. Therefore, such conventional systems may not accurately detect the true chemical nature of the marine region being sampled.
In addition, once the samples are returned to the testing facility, somewhat elaborate procedures must be performed in order to perform the chemical analysis. For example, in one chemical analysis system, a very delicate solid phase coated fiber must be submerged into the sample that was collected. The solid phase coated fiber must be exposed to the sample for an extended period of time in order to allow the solid phase coated fiber to absorb the various chemicals within the sample. Then, the solid phase coated fiber is inserted into a chemical analyzer which detects the chemicals absorbed by the solid phase coated fiber. Not only is this process time consuming, if the sample is not fairly fresh, the solid phase coated fiber may not be able to accurately absorb all the chemicals that were in the original sample, or may not be able to accurately show the chemical concentrations that were contained in the original sample. This is because chemicals may evaporate quickly upon opening the container or chemicals may change state by reacting with other chemicals within the sample during the transportation process.
The nature of the samplers enables both point samples and integrated samples. The integrated samples are ones where the sampling medium is run through the samplers for longer periods of time. This enables temporal averaging if the vehicle stays in one location or spatial averaging if the vehicle is in motion.
In view of the forgoing, the following invention has been devised to provide an efficient way to quickly and accurately perform remote sampling and analysis. In addition, the invention described below can be used in any environment where material can be pumped into the sampling interface, including gas, liquid, and particle environments.